Wi Ili am Ken tri dge L ive C in em a & L ife in S o u t h A frica A Telephone Conversation in Chicago, October 2 1 , 2 0 0 1 ROSELEE GOLDBERG & WILLIAM KENT RID GE RoseLee Goldberg: I t h i n k i t ’s people kicking him. I had never seen der threat. As a child I always had the almost impossible for non-South adult violence before. In fact, for me, sense of the om nipotence of my father Africans to understand the constancy violence had always been fiction until and not being under threat—which of political repression, the threat of po­ that m om ent. It was deeply shocking. perhaps was a false sense of security. lice violence, the relentless, day to day Then, there are childhood images of R G : As a child, I was forever changed degradation imposed on black South people being checked for passes— by the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. Africans, which we observed growing when I play these in my head though, I You graduated from the University of up in South Africa. don’t know if it is an old docum entary W itwatersrand in 1976, the same year of You were born in Johannesburg in or if it really happened. the Soweto uprising—-when students in 1955; what is your earliest m om ent of I didn’t sense it as constancy— for me it that township burned down their political awareness? was momentary—there was normal schools and refused to study in the lan­ William Kentridge: There are suburban life with nanny in-between guage of the oppressors, Afrikaans. different shocks of m om ents of realiza­ and one would ride along on a kind of These actions m arked the beginning of tion. One of them was when I was four normalized pattern. One didn’t live in an entirely new level of anti-apartheid or five and we were driving along the fear, but there were many times when action. Students, many of them mere Valley Road off Jan Smuts Avenue and, one was aware of others living in fear children, telling their parents enough looking out the car window, I saw a and of the hum iliation of blacks. I re­ is enough— that they would no longer m an lying in the gutter and four or five m em ber the awkwardness of being put stand the government’s cruel educa­ ahead of queues if you were white. tional system, designed to teach black ROSELEE GOLDBERG, a graduate R G : Given your m other and father’s students just enough for them to be of the Courtauld Institute of Art, pio­ positions as attorneys working against literate laborers, but not enough to join neered the study of performance art with apartheid—defending such clients as the work force beyond that. (Advanced her seminal work, Performance Art from Nelson M andela and the family of Steve math for example was not taught in Futurism to the Present (1979/2001). Author Biko—surely your phone would have schools, precisely for this reason.) And o f Performance: Live Art since 1960 ( 1 9 9 8 ) been tapped, your home probably un­ that they would now take the struggle a n d Laurie Anderson (2000), and a fre­ der constant police surveillance, your in their own hands. This sparked fero­ quent contributor to A r tfo r u m and other family’s movements noted. W hat was cious responses by the governm ent and magazines, she teaches at New York U ni­ your direct experience of this situation? the secret police and started a bloody v e rs ity . W K : No sense of being watched or un­ battle that would last for alm ost sixteen ZENO UM 4 UHR FRÜH, David Minnaar als Zeno. (PHOTO: RUPHIN COUDYZER) RUPHIN (PHOTO: Zeno. als Minnaar David FRÜH, UHR 4 UM ZENO PARKETT 63 2001 96 William Kent rid ge William Kentridge years. How did you feel to be graduat­ country. But even my memory of Bram ended up at Lecoq. I discovered very To give you another example: instead ing at the very moment when the revo­ Fischer (a prominent anti-apartheid quickly that I should not be an actor— of starting with a psychological ap­ lution exploded? lawyer, who was sent to prison for life) in three weeks I would say. But I proach to character, one would start WK: One didn’t have a sense that it was of picnics in his lush garden in learned huge amounts of what it is to with, say, the m aterials. L et’s do this was the start of the revolution. One un­ Houghton. What was harder to grasp be an artist from the theater school. performance as if this character were derstood that it was an extraordinary was the idea of him on the run from R G : Can you explain what you mean... made of honey. Because that’s such a eruption—but one was very much at the police and in disguise—that he was W K : The school very much had to do specific material, one could imagine a the edge rather than at the center. The part of an underground organization. I with the energy of a performance, how breathing that would go with that, a same kind of heady excitement ensued, suppose it was that sense of a double you modulate that, how the energy of voice, a movement, and it informs the which I am sure occurs whenever there life that South Africa consisted of. one moment—no more, no less—has to performance and in the end it makes a is a major upheaval, with all the rumor, Whether it’s someone like Bram be sufficient to give the spark for the character make sense. You can use the gossip, news, elements of the violence Fischer—this avuncular suburban man, next moment. And the great thing same thing with drawing. If I teach from Soweto erupting into the center but also this underground activist—or about a theater school was that the ex­ drawing, I usually use these same kinds of the city. There were no white stu­ whether it is the image of one’s power­ ercises they gave to the students were of exercises. Instead of saying to stu­ dents that went and stood at the barri­ ful, warm nanny being chased by police; not theoretical tasks, they were always dents, “Always make the same kind of cades with black students in Soweto. those kind of double understandings— physical tasks. So you have a simple mark when you’re drawing,” you give a There were protests by whites at the the world being so shattered—was for exercise, starting off crouched on the m etaphor like that, which will im m edi­ universities. There was a strange dou­ me what growing up in South Africa ground, and in one movement, stand­ ately change and inform the way a ble sense of being connected to it, was very m uch about. ing up and swinging your arms above mark is being made. I use these exer­ close to it, but not in it... which is the RG: Could you describe for the non- your head. And the task was to have the cises as a way of throwing open a differ­ position of whites in South Africa. South African what it was like to be an exact amount of energy, so that as you ent set of metaphorical vocabularies From 1973 onwards, when trade artist in South Africa? N ot to deal started that gesture, you went up and for thinking about art making. For that unions started reestablishing them­ with politics under these circumstances your hand stopped exactly above your reason, it was for me a fantastic school. selves, mainly in Durban, a lot of white would have been unimaginable. head. It was wrong if you needed an ex­ RG : Your films take me on an extraor­ student activism was in support of WK: There were a lot of artists who tra movement to get your hand to that dinary journey back to South Africa. I black trade unions, which was vital to managed not to deal with politics—but point and it was wrong if you had to see buildings 1 knew on Rissik Street, building the labor movement in South for me it was unimaginable. For awhile stop your hands from going beyond the on Jeppe Street, the Police Building, Africa and which became the basis of there were two different practices— vertical position. That was a practical, the scale of some of those thirties and the civic movement in the eighties. there was the trade union work and the physical exercise but what it was teach­ forties buildings with their rounded Practices of organization, the emer­ posters for them and there were the ing you was that the root of the final profiles. I'm always stunned by how gence of leadership, all came through theater performances. Then there image—hands straight above the head— much I recognize of Johannesburg in the trade union movement, and led to were other drawings that I was doing actually started elsewhere. Understand­ your fast-paced drawings. How would the civic organization. At that point I for myself that were more elliptical, ing that the first five millimeters and you describe your sense of the city and was doing posters for some trade less direct. The styles weren’t that dif­ the last five millimeters of the gesture its surroundings and your portraiture unions and this went on right into the ferent but there were different im­ are the really vital ones and that the o f it? WILLIAM KENTRIDGE, UBU & THE TRUTH COMMISSION, 1997, David Minnaar early eighties.